Two days after his father entered the ICU, Marcus sat through a 2.5 hour Forum meeting, gave a crisp business update, but no one in his Forum knew the real pain he was going through.
Marcus joined a Forum with a tight, business-only agenda. Members didn’t include family updates and personal reflections to make the meeting hyper focused on business growth. After four months of being together, the group rewrote his pricing, talked him out of a commission plan costing him two top reps, and helped him screen a controller candidate. By all accounts this group was invaluable to him.
They knew a lot about each other’s businesses, but didn’t know anything about each other or their personal lives. Nobody asked about personal health, weekends, family dynamics, or dating lives. But like Marcus, the real pain wasn’t happening in the business, it was happening outside of it.
As the months went on, Marcus knew everyone’s revenue range, top three goals, and biggest hiring problem. But he didn’t know any of their spouses by name. He doubted any member knew if his father was still alive, or worse, that he was in the ICU. The meetings still worked, but it felt very transactional.
Quick business wins get members to the meeting, but deep personal connections keep them there.
Business Wins Come Fast. Bonds Take Time.
In a prior post, I shared a 2.5-hour agenda for groups wanting to focus fully on business and leave personal and family topics out. I tested the format with several groups. The hyper focus on business did create value and quick wins, but I could tell the relationships were shallow. I know enough about community and retention to know that the more socially connected the people are, the more likely they are to stick around longer.
Work Hours Count for Less
Research from Jeffrey Hall at the University of Kansas shows how friendships form. You need about 50 hours together to go from acquaintance to casual friend, 90 hours to reach friend, and more than 200 hours to reach close friend. Hall adds hours spent working together count for less than hours spent relaxing and joking around.
Apply this to a monthly meeting. Twelve sessions of 2.5 hours equal 30 hours a year. Even if every minute counted fully, you would need almost two years to reach casual friend and more than six and a half years to reach close friend. A tight, business-only agenda feels productive and still leaves members distant.
Dinner and meetups help a lot. I wrote years ago, “dinner/lunch is where social bonding happens and social capital is built up.” Unfortunately, members often skip dinners in a group’s early months. If dinner is the only place you learn about each other’s personal lives, one skipped reservation erases the connection.
Bonding Keeps Members Through Hard Seasons
Robert Putnam, a Harvard political scientist and author of Bowling Alone, separates bonding social capital, which supports a group through hard times, from bridging social capital, which helps members get ahead. Pricing fixes and hiring plans help you get ahead, but a hospital stay calls for bonding.
Social capital measures the connection between members. In my prior post, The Fragility Of New Forums, I wrote that a new group needs about four months to build enough for deeper commitment. Putnam also ties loyalty in a large organization to a small group whose members spend enough time together “to know and be known to one another.” A business-only agenda teaches members each other’s metrics. Pastor Rick Warren, who runs small groups inside a church of 22,000 weekly attendees, says, “People are not looking for a friendly church as much as they are looking for friends.” Replace “church” with “Forum.”
Vulnerability Makes Forums Stick
Vulnerability is a cornerstone of Forums, and not surprising, vulnerability creates bonding. A meta-analysis by Nancy Collins and Lynn Miller found people who make intimate disclosures tend to be liked more than people who disclose at lower levels. People also like others more after disclosing to them.
Personal vulnerability can also be beneficial professionally. In a prior post, I described a member whose conflict with a strong female hire traced back to his family relationships. Another member’s work exhaustion came from new fatherhood and a commitment to be the present father he did not have. Both problems looked like business problems. A group hearing only the business version gives only business advice. Marcus’s group gave sharp feedback on a hiring decision without knowing he weighed the decision from a hospital parking lot. The feedback was accurate, and the person receiving it was a stranger.
Good news needs context too. A group never told about a daughter’s graduation misses the celebration, and the member takes his joy elsewhere.
Relationships Drive Retention
The Harvard Study of Adult Development began in 1938 with 724 participants and now includes 2,500 people, including spouses and descendants. Robert Waldinger summarizes the findings: “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”
Gallup’s Hannah Lomax says employees who strongly agree they have a best friend at work are seven times as engaged. A Forum asks busy people to protect a calendar block every month for years. Members stay when they stay engaged. Friendship belongs in your engagement plan.
Take Action: Put the Human Back in the Agenda
Keep the tight agenda but add the human back into it. Try these in your next meeting.
- Audit your last meeting: Count the minutes spent on personal topics. Zero is your starting point.
- Open with a 15-minute Life Lap: Give each member two minutes for one high and one low from outside work. Take the minutes from your longest business section. The other 135 minutes stay intact.
- Use the Health, Wealth, Love, Happiness update: Members rate each area from 1 to 10 and explain the highs and lows of the past 30 days. Love and Happiness cover the personal side.
- Add a personal shoutout: Shoutouts already allow personal or professional celebrations. Ask for at least one personal shoutout per meeting.
- Present one LifeLine per quarter: The 45-minute LifeLine activity maps the key moments of a member’s life. In a group of eight, one per quarter covers every member in two years.
- Follow up within 48 hours: When a member shares hard or great news, the moderator names one person to reach out. Use the group chat for goal updates and personal fun things.
- Protect the retreat: My one-day retreat formula gives one-third of the day to adventure and bonding.
- Run the Marcus test each quarter. Ask every member to name one thing happening in each other member’s life outside work.
Final Thoughts
Marcus’s story ends one of two ways. In one, his Forum keeps the conversation on business, his personal life gets worse, and he eventually sends a polite resignation with a perfect business goals record. In the other, a member asks about his father at the next meeting, and Marcus has a reason to stay. The business wins will keep coming either way. Make sure to add the human element into your agenda so your members know each other as people, beyond their revenue ranges.
